Monday, May 6, 2013

“Cleanse and Liberate!”

As a pro-Assad militia leader explained that the driving philosophy
behind the current operations in Banyas and its surroundings is to “cleanse and
liberate” the only coastal town in Syria where Sunnis make up a majority, and
as hundreds of Sunni families are indeed being forced to flee, world attention
seems destined to focus over the next phase on the allegations
just brought by Carla Del Ponte that rebels were behind the use of Sarin gas in
Syria! And yet, miraculously, it’s the rebels and their supporters who are being
killed and displaced! Cut the bullshit!, pardon my Italian! Had rebels had access
to Sarin gas and had they had the necessary knowhow to deploy it, they might
have been tempted to use it during their months-long siege of various military airports
that keep raining death and havoc on their communities. The fact that they haven’t
reflects either a principled stand on their part, lack of access, or both, but
in all cases, it makes clear that the Sarin call in Syria has been heeded by
the Assadists only, not the rebels. QED

Sunday May
5, 2013

Death Toll:116, including 16 women and 21 children: 29 were reported
in Damascus and its suburbs; 21 in Banyas; 19 in Homs; 10 in Idlib; 10 in
Aleppo; 9 in Deir Ezzor; 7 in Daraa; 7 in Hama; 3 in Lattakia; and 1 in Raqqa
(LCC).

News

Syria
Blames Israel for Fiery Attack in DamascusThe attack, which sent
brightly lighted columns of smoke and ash high into the night sky above the
Syrian capital, struck several critical military facilities in some of the
country’s most tightly secured and strategic areas, killing dozens of elite
troops stationed near the presidential palace, a high-ranking Syrian military
official said in an interview. Israel refused to confirm the attacks, the
second in three days, and Israeli analysts said it was unlikely that Israel was
seeking to intervene in the Syrian conflict. They said the attacks in all
likelihood expanded and continued Israel’s campaign to prevent the Syrian
government from transferring weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and
political party in neighboring Lebanon that is one of Israel’s most dangerous
foes.

Syrian
Rebels May Have Used Sarin“Our investigators have been in neighboring
countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals,” Ms. Del Ponte
said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television. “According to their report
of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not
yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims
were treated.” “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by
the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian… The United States
has said it has “varying degrees of confidence” that sarin has been used by
Syria’s government on its people.

Syrian
rebels enter northern air baseThe Britain-based Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said rebels moved deep inside Mannagh air base, near the border
with Turkey, despite fire from government warplanes. The Aleppo Media Center
says rebels captured a tank unit inside the base and that the base commander,
Brig. Gen. Ali Salim Mahmoud, was killed. The fighting came hours after Israeli
warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital, setting off a series
of explosions as they targeted a shipment of highly accurate, Iranian-made
guided missiles believed to be bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group,
officials and activists said.

Bill
Keller: Syria Is Not Iraqt in Syria, I fear prudence has become
fatalism, and our caution has been the father of missed opportunities,
diminished credibility and enlarged tragedy. The United States has supplied
humanitarian aid and diplomatic pressure. But our reluctance to arm the rebels
or defend the civilians being slaughtered in their homes has convinced the
Assad regime (and the world) that we are not serious. Our fear that arms
supplied to the rebels would fall into the hands of jihadis has become a
self-fulfilling prophecy, because instead of dealing directly with the rebels
we left the arming to fundamentalist monarchies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and
they are predictably using lethal aid to appease the more radical Islamists.

Strikes
on Syria Signal an Emboldened Israel … a civil war that has gone on for
more than two years has changed Israel’s calculus. Israeli officials are
betting that Assad will not retaliate, both because his forces have their hands
full already and because any strike against Israel would risk Israeli counterstrikes
that might seriously degrade his advantages in the civil war, like airpower.
“They don’t want to open a new front that might be the last one they open,”
says one Israeli military official. “They would suffer a knockout punch.” One
measure of Israel’s confidence was the whereabouts of its Prime Minister:
Benjamin Netanyahu left on Sunday for a long-scheduled state visit to Beijing.

In this leaked video we see a leader of a pro-Assad militia known as
Al-Kayyal speaking to supporters during a recent recruitment rally explaining
the philosophy behind the current loyalist campaign in the coastal town of Banyas.
Al-Kayyak is a Turkish Alawite and leads a small militia of Turkish Alawite
recruits fighting for Assad in Syria. The religious scholar to his left is an
Alawite religious figure known as Mouaffac Ghazal. Al-Kayyal says that Banyas (a
town where the majority population happens to be Sunni Arab whereas the population
of the larger province happens to be Alawite) is the only outlet the “traitors”
[AKA the Sunnis] have to the sea and could be used to bring enemies from abroad,
hence the need to “besiege” and “cleanse” the town, “sooner rather than later.”
The essence of their resistance, he says, is to “cleanse and liberate.” Politics
is not their concern, he says. http://youtu.be/y0P4rhRjR9I
Indeed, the city of Banyas is now being targeted by heavy artillery http://youtu.be/HGGWTJpNdJM

Cleanse Your Mind

Meanwhile, member of the UN commission member investigating possible
use of chemical weapons in Syria, Carla Del Ponte, made a
statement in a press conference in Geneva in which she seemed to assume
that rebels were beyond the use of Sarin gas in the incidents under investigation.
While she claimed that the results of the investigation provided “strong,
concrete suspicions” that Sarin was used, she said that the evidence was not “incontrovertible.”
She then added matter of fact that the use of Sarin was “on the part of the
opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.” She offered no
evidence in this regard, but she seems to be referring to official claims made by
the Assad regime after an attack took place against the town of Khan Al-Assal for
which the regime blamed rebels – a ludicrous and unsupported claim that was nonetheless
widely circulated by international media at the time.

However, Del Pone’s statement, as sensational as it is at this stage, does
not seem to reflect an official position by the commission itself, as such, an
official clarification needs to be issued soon. For the real story in Syria today
is the all too visible and ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against the Sunni population
in coastal and central areas in Syria and the repetitive incidents of Sarin gas
use in a variety of locations across the country by regime forces. Incidents of
the regime use of Sarin have been corroborated by the Americans (shyly), the French,
the British and the Israelis.

Airport Cleansed!

Rebels took
over huge segments of Minnigh Military Airport today. The progress
comes after a defector killed the Airport’s chief, Ali Salim Mahmoud, and some of
his top men two days ago. This is a rebel commander announcing the development two
days ago.

News editor at Syrian Satellite TV, Khalid Khalil, declares his
defection and apologizes to the Syrian people for the lateness in announcing his
decision, but says he was providing reports to rebels since the beginning of
the revolution http://youtu.be/VtTMMjQGWTA

About the Author

Ammar Abdulhamid is a liberal Syrian pro-democracy activist whose anti-regime activities led to his exile in September of 2005. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife, Khawla Yusuf, and their children, Oula (b.1986) and Mouhanad (b. 1990). He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.